Lifestyle

Bright, sunwashed, clean - pressure washer country, patio glass reflecting forested hill-sides punctuated by households designed not by committee but by a particular kind of conformity. A world of air fresheners, where objects fit naturally into landscapes created by mood boards headlined GLOSSY; PASTEL; BIRCH.

Martin Hederos provides a score made of infomercial synthesiser, the kind of cheery electronica that suggests enthusiasm about blenders, an imminent montage of people failing to open a bottle of carbonated beverage, of a fixed grin extolling the obvious virtues of a cylindrical lasagne of uniform density to a depth of 21 centimetres (19 in Canada). Camilla and Freddy and Rasmus and Jenny are having a meal, salad in the sunshine on a deck, conversations about wine cellars (or at least wine fridges), but disaster strikes. It's followed by uncomfortable silences, by AA batteries falling from a digital camera, from the careful definition by implication of curves that these couples are ahead of, are behind.

This is a world of barbecues, of balconies without guard rails, not one of garages and body bags. This is a world of salad tongs and cool blocks, not refrigerators, not flourescent lights - the shining generated by those pressure washers, not the dusty shelves they lie abandoned upon until company is coming. Henrik Anderson's film is a sunny slice of a particular mindset, the world that we glimpse through the pages of IKEA catalogues, the condiment-only pantries of serviced apartments and holiday homes. It's not hallucinatory, more pathologically aspirational towards gentle palettes and flattened affect, but its smoothness and polish are indicative and compelling.